Never really branched into those two abilities before, but the whole -3 str and -3 dex thing gets me skeptical that they are significantly better than just your normal attack. I usually have enough XP to grab them at around 600 feet, just in time for Rauko/serpent/deathblade territory, which all sport a good amount of protection that's difficult to carve through.

But as of right now, even if I have an excess of strength, I think about getting momentum to get extra damage sides out of my weapon, and not those two abilities. If I have an excess of dexterity/evasion, I think about getting riposte. I guess it's difficult to justify wasting experience on something that may or may not increase your damage output, while skills like momentum or riposte offer only concrete upsides.

You can only wield a 1 dice or 2 dice weapon in the off hand, and those require crits to really contribute significant damage output to my understanding. While the -3 strength is not huge for a low dice weapon, the -3 dexterity is crippling. I have a +2 deathblade in my current game, and I'm struggling to see how an additional +15 1d10 attack would do anything for me when my primarily weapon (1handed) does +16 3d9. It'd be a different story if my melee was stupidly high that the deathblade can reliably crit.

Rapid attack is even harder to conceptualize. You're giving up strength AND dexterity in your primary weapon. You're going to have more trouble getting through heavy protection since you roll against them twice with lower chance of hitting and lower damage potential.

What are people's thoughts on when it becomes a good idea to get them? Do you get one? The other? Or both? When does getting those abilities offer you additional damage?

I know one reason for taking two-weapon fighting is if the weapon offers benefits outside of pure stats, like Narsil for the light, rCold, and rFire. You could also take it with Galadriel for the +3 evasion. But I'm specifically interested in the damage output comparison.

My guess is they're only good very late game...with obscenely high dexterity and a sharpness weapon, and not something to think about getting at 600 feet, but I'm curious what others think. If they ARE actually a good choice for right when you start wandering in rauko/serpent territory, then I've been missing out. And if you've run simulations, please do share. Always love it when the discussion gets a little mathy.

I only bother at throneroom depth tbh. They're useful for leveraging strength potions, and as you mentioned Galadriel is (arguably) the best shield in the game. For pure damage output you're probably better off with subtlety vs V but I haven't crunched those numbers. Angrist is an interesting case since it's weight and armour piercing ability completely nullifies the strenght issues, but probably isn't worth giing up the shield slot. Also, damage rings still benefits both weapons so there's that.

I think two-weapon fighting is only practical if you've gotten a lucky artifact drop, otherwise, as you've found, no standard double-fine drop is really able to contribute damage wise, even less when you consider the xp cost and giving up a good shield for it.

I've tried using Rapid Attack to underwhelming success a while ago; iirc, it works with Concentration, but the combo didn't really blow me away. Maybe if someone's ever made a non-stealth subtlety char it'd have good use?

I think two-weapon fighting is only practical if you've gotten a lucky artifact drop, otherwise, as you've found, no standard double-fine drop is really able to contribute damage wise, even less when you consider the xp cost and giving up a good shield for it.

I've tried using Rapid Attack to underwhelming success a while ago; iirc, it works with Concentration, but the combo didn't really blow me away. Maybe if someone's ever made a non-stealth subtlety char it'd have good use?

Some versions ago rapid attack with a 0.9 lb shortsword was a thing. I was trying to get a 0 str melee winner back then w/ subtlety and rapid attack... for later upgrade to a sharp 0.9 lb shortsword, but the next version streamlined this out of existence. For this combo rapid attack really was worth it, since the str-3 did not matter at all.

Say you have a 1 lb (+1, 1d8) shortsword. You have 0 strength. Melee is 15 normally. With rapid attack, you get two (+13, 1d5) attacks. And if you have subtlety, you get a crit every multiple of 7 to-hit roll over enemy evasion roll.

Now say you have a 0.9 lb (+1, 1d8) shortsword. You still have 0 strength and your melee is still 15. With rapid attack, you get two (+13, 1d5) attacks. And if you have subtlety, you get a crit every multiple of 6.9 to-hit roll over enemy evasion roll. But since to-hits are always integers, you're going to have to beat enemy evasion roll by 7 anyways.

Did I misunderstand something about how rapid attack works? Why does str-3 not matter?

In an ill-advertised quirk of the weight system, weapons can only lose as many sides of their to-damage dice due to negative strength as they can gain due to positive, ie up to their maximum weight rounded down.

Meaning 0.5 weight daggers (or .9 shortswords) can't actually lose any at all, only getting a relatively insignificant -3 to hit penalty. Angrist in particular is good for this since it isn't reliant on getting criticals in order to push damage through

imo, both are bad outside the throne room unless you have a very good offhand like Narsil or Galadriel. In the throne room, rapid attack is amazing and two-weapon fighting is okay. If you have subtlety and rapid attack, you can basically melt Morgoth with a +2 deathblade.